NYC Triathlon

First of all, rest in peace to Esteban Neira. My thoughts and prayers are with your family.

I finished the NYC Triathlon this last weekend. Amazing experience, it was a lot of fun and all my training paid off. Some random observations from my first-ever triathlon:

• [A lot of] triathletes have really good looking girlfriends.
  
• And really fancy bikes
• And really fancy wetsuits.
• Tight bike shorts+loose t-shirt+man=a terrible look
• Crotch pads are a great invention

I was pretty happy with my time, everything shook out as I expected. I turned in a pretty strong swim (one of the faster times in my age group and not bad overall), but I run and bike about as fast as molasses. The chart below outlines it pretty well. My swim time compared to my bike+run times look like they come from two different people. A tale of two athletes. There's something really gratifying about my chubby self out swimming giant muscle-bound athletes. Who then proceeded to crush me once we got on our bikes. Check out my times (Yoon) compared to other people around me. My swim (23:58) is buttressed by people who swam their mile in the 30s and 40s. The columns (sorry no headers) are: Last name, place in age-group (30-34), Total time, swim time, Transition 1 (swim to bike), Bike, Transition 2 (bike to run), run time.













Here are some pics.



I hate Amtrak
You might notice I'm riding a hybrid bike in the pics, not a regular road bike you'd use for a race like this.

I used Amtrak package express to ship my bike from Providence to NY Penn Station. Turns out, even thought their customer service agent told me I'd be able to pick up my bike on Saturday, the NY package office is closed on weekends. No bike for me.

The race was Sunday. I rented a heavy-ass hybrid cruiser bike at a local shop and used that for the race. The bike is a tank, great for tourists casually checking out the west side bike path or cruising Central Park. Embarassing in a race like this.

Anyway, good looking out City Bikes on the short notice rental, you saved my ass. Amtrak, you can kiss my ass. I shipped a bike to NY for nothing. I couldn't even ship it back to Providence. Turns out, NY Penn Station only receives, they don't ship, WTF??? another thing the agent didn't mention. So I had to lug the bike box to a cab to Port Authority and take it with me on the Peter Pan bus. Another close call, because the bus almost didn't have enough luggage room for it.